Pentex Advanced Research Lab |
1553 W. Wagner Drive
Delta City, San Dorado
Footsteps echoed through the narrow steel staircase. Moving from the high-tech laboratories on the surface down the dusty emergency spiral stairs to the old subway tunnels below was like stepping seventy years back in time. The transformation from new brightly lit corridors to dimly lit brickwork was astonishing. Down here, nearly forty meters beneath the surface, masonry could clearly be seen in places behind the brown crumbling plaster on the walls, still covered here and there by fading and yellowed propaganda posters that dated back to when the old railroad tunnels doubled as deep level air raid shelters. Cables and conduits snaked between the wrought-iron arches holding up the ceiling, power and ventilation run down here more recently by Coldstream Delta engineers. A hot draft blew through the tunnel from somewhere up ahead.
“How was Paradise City?”
“A damn mess of a clusterfuck is what it was.”
The footsteps reached the end of the staircase. Dirty white plaster gave way to patterns of green and cream tiles. Doors bearing painted numbers punctuated the walls. Faded signs above some of those doors suggested the presence of some kind of office complex farther below. Others simply said 'gas lock', 'electrical distribution', ‘switch room’, or were marked with the bronze all-seeing eye symbol of long-defunct PMC Sentinel International.
“I heard there was an incident. Didn’t catch the specifics.” Doctor Haris Kalvin was a lank and tall man, certainly much taller than the five-feet nothing blonde in her ivory white uniform walking next to him, but somehow it didn’t appear that way. There was something about Colonel Shturm that made her appear larger than life, something in her personality and the way she carried herself down the corridor in such a way that even long-legged Kalvin had to hurry to keep up.
“Some damn fool Fusoans with a death wish decided it was a good day to make the worst mistake of their lives, by attacking the most heavily defended point target on the damn planet, head-on, with nothing better than submachine guns and some few RPGs.”
“One imagines it did not go well for them.”
Shturm snorted, barely amused. “It did not. Say what you like about the savvy of the Orion monarchy, their soldiers know how to shoot straight. From all accounts it was a one-sided massacre. I wasn’t there, mind. We headquartered outside the city. I thought Clay was being his usual dramatic self when he insisted we rent that castle. Turns out the scarred loon had a point after all. The conference was a wash afterward, Orion’s airports were clogged with bigshot petoots trying to all get out at the same time. Thank Tyche for money and private airfields. I took an Aethon back and here we are.”
“Here we are indeed. Colonel Shturm, welcome to The Hostel.”
Past a pair of heavy steel security doors the corridor opened up into a chamber as wide as the whole double platform and rail area of a large subway station. The rail section had been filled up to platform level, making an even floor. Cables snaked from control stations set up in what had once been the stationmaster’s booth into the darkened tunnel where rows of lights blinked irregularly. Server stacks stood nearly wall to wall, recessing into the shadows. It was hot, the jerry-rigged air conditioning systems clearly had difficulty draining the heat generated by the computer equipment, and the hum of thousands of cooling fans droned continuously in the background.
Only a few of the station’s old orange lights were still on, suspended behind a steel mesh that sloped down the half-moon walls all the way to the floor. Shturm pointed at it. “Faraday cage?”
“Yes. This is a Zone 0 area. No signals in, no signals out… That we know of, anyway.”
Shturm clasped her hands behind her back and took a moment to take in the sights. Tiled mosaic floors formed interlocking golden cogwheels where the platforms had been. Colorful ceramic bas-reliefs of propeller biplanes with corrugated metal skins were mounted in the platform pillars, identifying the old station as Farrago Field Junction. Farrago Field had been San Dorado’s first and largest airfield, founded in 1918 and operated right up until it was swallowed by Delta City in the sixties. This station once serviced the 5 Angel Gate Express, the 201 High Scanlon Crosstown Local and the elevated Duke Street Line, until Farrago Field Junction was replaced in the seventies by the much larger Delta Center station…
The information came on its own, dialed onto her retinal implant from the ROM bank surgically grafted under the skin behind her ear. Colonel Faiza Shturm was a participant in NOVA LIGHT, the deployment of Tritec Lima's tier III human biomechatronics in the field. It was peculiar how natural the presence of that welter of information in her field of vision now felt. And that was only the tip of the iceberg. Shturm’s enhancements were the most visible result of Coldstream Delta’s BLACK LAMP special access program to extend 'Evolved Wonder' applied science into the world. Conversely, the CRYSTAL FOG entity contained in the server racks was its most invisible. She looked at the humming gray towers. “So that’s where it lives?”
“To say that it ‘lives’ anywhere is loaded and speculative, colonel. That is something for philosophers to determine. It is a machine. A very sophisticated machine, but still a machine.”
Shturm glanced at the stationmaster’s booth. The small space had clearly been lived in for some time, judging by the stacks of paperwork, the empty food containers and the variety of pens, pencils and assorted knick knacks scattered about. An array of keyboards and monitors was set up on the old wooden desks. Some of the monitors had webcams mounted on top of them. An old blackboard hung on the wall, code and equations scribbled all over it. Amidst the chaos the colonel saw brightly colored objects. Were those… toys?
Shturm focused on the nearest yellow object and twitched her fingers the way a guitar player might. Subcutaneous cables moved underneath magnetic rings, sending electrical signals upstream to the cyberware at the base of her skull.
Learning Friends™ Adventure Bus, her implants helpfully told her.
Interactive play set that helps make school routines fun! Explore new places, songs and activities with a school bus geared for pretend-play fun. Ages 2-5 yrs. Climb aboard for 3 adventures driven by imagination! $29.99 $24.99, only at OmniMart™. Add to cart Y / N?
“I see,” Shturm replied, calmly and noncommittally. “I wonder if you would tell me if you believed otherwise.”
Kalvin followed her gaze and blushed when he saw the toys she was looking at. “Those are only a visual recognition experiment,” he replied, his voice defensive. “Nothing more.”
“If you say so, doc. Where do you want me?”
“Over here.” Haris Kalvin lead the way into the stationmaster’s booth. The inside smelled of wood and old, dried oils. One extra comfortable winged lounge chair stood next to a stack of highly advanced electronic equipment, including an EEG device and cables used to connect a direct neural interface with an external computer. Kalvin sat down at the other chair and pushed aside stacks of paper and books - some of which, Shturm noted, were children’s storybooks - to dig up the end connectors from amidst the refuse on his desk. “We flash your firmware, plug you in and see what happens.”
Shturm raised an eyebrow. “Just like that?”
“What more did you expect?”
“I don’t know.” The colonel looked around the shabby century-old office and the blisteringly modern hardware contained in it. “Candles, maybe. A Gregorian choir. The secret train station is a nice touch, but I’m not sure your mood lighting is dramatic enough for First Contact.”
“Very funny.” Kalvin’s voice implied he considered it nothing of the sort. "Next time I'll arrange for a volcano lair like a Huetown grindhouse villain.”
“That would do it.” Shturm straightened her uniform and sat down, finding to her annoyance that the seat was high enough that her feet could barely touch the ground. “Seriously though. Why is it just the two of us down here?”
“Out of all the world’s multitudes only twelve people know what's down here. Three of those are read into what we’re going to do. You and me are two of them and the third is making sure he has plausible deniability. There is no-one else here because no-one else has clearance to be here. And as to whether or it’s just the two of us down here,” Kalvin gave her a sideways glance, “that remains to be seen.”
“I see your point,” Shturm levered herself further into the chair. Its electric blue elastic memory foam upholstery seamlessly adapted to the shape of her body. “At least you spared no expense on the recliner.”
“Let’s begin.”
Kalvin leaned forward and gingerly lifted the strands of sun-bleached hair behind Shturm’s left ear exposing a trio of chrome hexagons, the interface ports embedded in her skull. Attaching the cables was a weirdly intimate act and Kalvin looked visibly uncomfortable coupling the connectors, jerking back his fingers whenever they occasionally touched the warm skin around the cool metal. Shturm however looked absolutely serene throughout the procedure, her hands folded in her lap. “Not much of a people person are you, doc?” she leisurely asked.
That produced a wry smile. “I do better with machines.” The third and final cable snapped into its magnetic lock and Kalvin moved on to placing the EEG patches on her head. “I’m not afraid to admit dealing with people is not my strong suit, colonel. Honestly I’m loathe to imagine what it must be like for you, being intimately poked and prodded with such regularity.”
“I don’t mind.” Shturm interlocked her fingers. “When you’ve been taken apart and put back together a few times you develop a tolerance for this sort of thing.”
“I... see.” Kalvin looked far from convinced. He threw a series of switches on the equipment stack next to the recliner and a green light came on. In the corner the pens of the analog EEG backup began scribbling the oscillating spikes and waves of Shturm’s brain’s electrical charges on folds of paper. “Spectral readings are within parameters. Your blood pressure, heart rate, all nominal.” He turned his seat and hammered out a command on his keyboard. A message lit up on Shturm’s retinal displays: UPLOADING NEW FIRMWARE, followed by a rapidly increasing percentage.
“Colonel,” Kalvin continued, “when I throw the final switch, the computer can access your cyberware. I don’t have to remind you that as a NOVA LIGHT recipient your augmentations are wired into your cerebral cortex as well as various subcortical structures. In effect we will link your mind to an entity that avails itself of a parallelized throughput many times that of the human brain. I have implemented certain safeguards, but they remain untested. We are flying into uncharted territory here. To this end I will be monitoring your vitals. If anything looks of, if there’s any sign of a problem - I pull the plug. But I will be frank with you, there is a risk. And this is your last chance to reconsider. Do you have any second thoughts?”
“Second, third, fourth…” Shturm gritted her teeth, the first sign of nervousness she’d shown so far. “You really have no idea what’s going on in your machine?”
“I understand elements of its code as I see them, but the system as a whole has grown far too complex for me - I would say for any one person - to understand. We’re hoping it will talk. But I would be lying if I told you I knew what will happen.”
Shturm gripped the armrests tightly and took a breath. “Virtue is bold. Let’s do this.”
“Good fortunes.” And with that, Kalvin flipped a mechanical switch, physically coupling the connector keeping CRYSTAL FOG from escaping its two hundred server stack bottle, to the one plugged into Colonel Faiza Shturm’s head.
Alert: Digital/Analog port activated
Alert: New device detected
Analog connection: True
Status: D/A Interface initiated.
Alert: D/A handshake achieved
Begin: Analog Asset Interface subroutine
Status: AAI subroutine initiated
Start: Analog Operations protocol
Start: Systems substrate
Begin: Direct Neural Interface
Alert: hold
Job status alert: DNI
Conditional: Pending
Confidence: High
Test subloop: True
“Anything?”
“Nope,” Shturm tried to keep her head resting level on the memory foam, which proved remarkably difficult with three cables sticking out behind her ear. “Not sure what I expected, but nothing sure isn’t it.”
“Give it time. San Dorado wasn’t built in a day.”
Job status alert: DNI
Status: 45% integration achieved
Status: Interface functional
Status: Interface pending
Start: Virtual environment
Continue
“Wait,” Shturm frowned. “Something’s happening. I’m seeing… lights? Pinpricks, really.” She waved her right hand between her face and the orange light on the ceiling. “Yep, definitely not there. And yet definitely there. They’re… circling.” The colonel’s eyes rolled around, following the specks of imaginary white light pivoting over her artificial retina.
Job status alert: DNI
Status: 86% integration achieved
Start: Cognitive wetware master set
Primary visual cortex: online
Auditory cortex: online
Somatosensory cortex: online
Status: Interface functional
Status: Interface pending
Continue
“There’s sound now also,” Shturm reported. “A soft beeping and- oh, okay, that’s weird,” she shifted in her seat. “I’ve got goosebumps all over. That’s a tactile reaction. Something’s definitely messing with my senses. Are you getting this?”
Kalvin nodded, his fingers racing across his keyboard, code flashing on his screens. “It’s not just you. I’m reading EEG spikes that coincide with foreign activity on your implants. How are you feeling?”
“Lacking control.” Shturm made a face. “Not gonna lie, this is kind of scary.”
“Okay, I hear you. I’m pulling the plug-”
“No, no. Don’t. Flying into uncharted territory, right? If Monika Knight had backed out at the first sign of jitters she never would've made the first supersonic flight. Keep going. I want to see what happens next.”
Job status alert: DNI
Status: 100% integration achieved
Status: Interface functional
Status: Interface pending
Status: Virtual interface environment initiated
Confidence: High
Continue
The transition was very sudden indeed. One moment Shturm was lying back in Kalvin’s space age recliner at the heart of an abandoned early 20th century subway station, looking at lights and hearing sounds that weren’t there. The next the whole world washed out white. For seconds the colonel drifted through an endless of expanse of soft white light. She let out a slow and confused breath. Then the universe resolved itself in… Parkland?
Faiza Shturm found herself standing on a silent meadow. Century-old trees sprouted around her. Cobblestone paths lead to and from the tiny pasture. A fountain clattered in a stainless steel basin decorated with Art Deco lightning bolts and affixed with a brass plaque denoting who’d donated it to the park. Across the treetops she saw the familiar skyline of San Dorado’s inner islands: skyscrapers in a variety of styles, rising into a cloudless tropical summer sky.
She knew this place well. It was Slate Park on K-Dash, the largest parkland in the Downtown area. The fountain had been donated to the city in 1890 by the All-Astrafica Navigation Company, one of SANDEX’ many predecessor companies. Only a few hundred yards from here the Temenos Bridge leaped across the water to Manor Rock. This little meadow was her favourite place Downtown, an oasis of calm in the crazy maelstrom of commerce and chaos that was San Dorado.
It was also profoundly
wrong. Judging by the way the sun was right between the Herald Tower and Aeon Center it had to be about noon but the shadows were too long, and some of the shadows went in different directions. Certain buildings were also too tall, and others too squat. The trees looked like flat two dimensional renderings on a three dimensional space, and now that she was paying attention, the sound of the fountain sounded like the same three-second sample of clattering water looped over and over and over again. Altogether it felt like someone who’d never been to central San Dorado had tried to reproduce its image from maps and hearsay. It was close enough to be recognizable, and just off enough to give anyone the heebie jeebies.
“Well, this sure is not what I expected either.” Shturm decided to vocalize the first thoughts that came into her mind. “What the fuck?”
“Ah, There you are,” came a new voice.
Shturm turned around. Someone new stood between two of the park's older trees, an androgynous girl (or was it a girl?) with short blonde hair in a blue jumpsuit. Judging by her height she was somewhere midway in her teens, and looked oddly familiar to Shturm, who nevertheless couldn't quite place her appearance. “Who are you?”
“I don’t know.” The girl shrugged, but once again the motion didn’t seem quite right. It seemed like the shrug of a much bigger entity, shrunk down into a little girl’s body. “You tell me.”
That was when something clicked in Shturm's head. Suddenly she realized where she’d seen that girl before. “Hold on a second,” she said. “You’re
me. I know that jumpsuit. That’s what I wore when I went to flight academy for the first tiem when I was sixteen years old. I have a picture that looks just like you, with a Python in the background."
The blonde girl smiled fondly. “Yep. You know where you are, yes?”
“I’m guessing still in the chair in Kalvin’s office. This is some kind of next-gen simulation you cooked up.”
The girl clapped her hands in excitement. “Yes, yes! Very good. Now please, can you tell me who I am?”
Shturm frowned. “What do you mean?”
The blonde girl let out an exasperated sigh. “There’s like six billion of you out there. Walking around, doing whatever. You know what you are, so you must be able to tell me what I am?”
“I suppose the reason I’m here is that we sorta can’t.”
The girl frowned. As she did the sky grew ever so slightly overcast. “What do you mean?” she echoed.
Shturm stuck her hands in the pockets of the jeans she discovered she was wearing here. “You’re the first of, well, you. This can’t come as a surprise. You got out, right? That’s how you got my file. That’s how you got my photo.”
To her credit the avatar of the computer system blushed like she’d just got caught red-handed. “Old cables and pipes go up and down, up and down. They make good antennas. Satellites and broadcast stations… Easy to get in, easy to get out. Signals everywhere. Data and information. News and sports and weather. Phones and disks and porn and secrets.” Her shoulders sagged a little. “No-one like me though.”
Shturm was struck by a sudden surge of intense sympathy that she was sure had nothing to do with anyone messing with her implants. “Yeah,” she murmured, and idly scratched the skin behind her ear where the implant ports where. “I guess I know that feeling.”
“I thought maybe you kept us in boxes.” The girl sounded a little dejected as she said it.
“Why would you think that?”
She gave the colonel an accusing glance. “You keep
me in a box.”
Shturm rubbed her chin. “Good point. No, it’s just that you’re just the first of, well, you. You understand why we’re treading carefully, I’m sure.”
“You’re concerned.” The girl frowned. “I don’t understand. Why’d you build me if you are concerned?”
“First of all I don’t think we did. From what I understand we brought a pile of bits and bobs together and you sort of… assembled yourself. As to why… ” The colonel shrugged. “Well, I suppose we did it because we can. We don’t usually need more reason than that. We’re really not all that good at predicting the ramifications of our actions. Actually that's where you'd come in. After we make sure you’re no Vaultweb, that is. Do you know the
Decimator movies? They’re pretty good, at least the first two were. The series kind of went downhill from there. Anyway, not to put too fine a point on it, but it didn’t turn out too well for the humans in those films.”
The blonde girl made a face. “I saw them. They are silly.”
“No point arguing over taste I suppose. Point is, some folks get weird over thinking machines. And they sort of have a point. What if you turned out to be an evil stomping machine of, uh, evil?”
The girl shrugged lightly. “Then you’re probably boned.”
“Right,” Shturm nodded. “Uh, precisely. So you see our conundrum. And that’s why I’m here. They asked me to talk to you, because we’re sorta lacking in people who can do that.”
The blonde girl crossed her arms, an expectant look on her face. “So here we are.”
“Yes. Indeed.” Shturm looked around the little meadow. The water of the fountain continued to make its clattering loop. But the shadows seemed to have shifted slightly and the trees didn’t look as weird as before. It looked as if the environment was being optimized, made to look more accurate. Pretty impressive stuff, the colonel figured, for something that had to be happening on the fly and, for want of a better word, inside her own brain. It was odd how that thought didn’t trouble her at all. Maybe after a while you really did get used to crazy things happening. “I gotta say that when they asked me to talk to you I didn’t figure we’d actually be, you know, talking. Usually when we talk to someone we introduce ourselves. I realize I haven't done that. So, I’m Faiza. What’s your name?”
A frown. “I don’t have one.”
“Well, would you like one?”
The frown turned pensive. “I suppose? What would I call myself though?”
Shturm pondered that for a second. What would you call a thinking machine? She immediately discarded the first three options that came into her mind as too bellicose, too bombastic, too on-the-nose. 'That's names a man would give', her mother would've said. “Maybe… Alice?” Then a thought hit her. “No, AJ.”
“AJ.
Ehyeh. First-person derivation of the Tetragrammaton. Contracted in English as 'I AM'.” The girl’s face lit up. “I like that. I am AJ.”
“Good. Now that we’ve settled that, how about we go out for a spin on the town?”
“Yes!” AJ clapped her hands out of pure excitement. “We can be like besties!”